TheEconomistNovember 23rd 2019 471T
he diplomatswho have testified to
Congress over the past two weeks have
underlined a fundamental point about the
impeachment investigation into Donald
Trump: it grows out of America’s fight
against corruption in eastern Europe. First
George Kent, a State Department official,
explained that since Ukraine’s revolution
in 2014 America had come to see corrup-
tion as a vital tool of Russian influence.
Promoting the rule of law, Mr Kent said,
was not just a human-rights concern but at
the heart of American security policy.
Then Marie Yovanovitch, a former am-
bassador to Ukraine, recounted how fig-
ures linked to Ukrainian oligarchs had con-
vinced President Trump to have her
removed. The prize Mr Trump sought, an
announcement that Ukraine was investi-
gating the son of his electoral rival, former
Vice-President Joe Biden, was rooted in Mr
Biden’s role as point man for rule-of-law
concerns in eastern Europe. America had
tried to fight corruption in Ukraine, and
corruption in Ukraine was fighting back.
America’s effort to combat graft in cen-
tral and eastern Europe is now in trouble.
The Trump administration has given it
only intermittent support. Meanwhile, the
impeachment investigation is highlight-
ing behaviour in America that resembles
the practices it condemns elsewhere. The
damage is “incalculable”, says a senior
State Department diplomat (and life-long
Republican). “It will take decades to re-
build our credibility. What other countries
are seeing in this White House is every-
thing we’ve preached against.”
This is a pity. Anti-corruption activists
in former communist countries have relied
on American support ever since the end of
the cold war. American aid has backed in-
dependent investigative media, trained
judges and prosecutors and helped set up
transparent registers for government pro-
curement. The State Department budgetfor Europe and Eurasia ($615m last year) is a
lifeline for civil-society organisations. In
Ukraine, Romania and Moldova, America
has supported reformist politicians when
they came under attack from oligarchs. In
Poland and Hungary it has backed inde-
pendent judges when ruling parties tried to
subvert the courts.
As relations with Russia soured early
this decade, American intelligence agen-
cies grew concerned about Russian mon-
ey-laundering flows. “Corruption was be-
ing used as a tool of coercion by outside
actors, but it was also rotting natoand eu
members from inside,” says Victoria Nu-
land, an architect of policy under the
Obama administration. Mr Biden began
visiting central and eastern Europe to
stress that America now saw corruption as
a national-security issue.
“We always felt we had the support of
the United States embassy,” says Cristian
Ghinea, a Romanian anti-corruption activ-
ist and member of the European Parlia-
ment. America and the eudefended Roma-
nia’s tough anti-corruption prosecutor
when she came under attack. In Bulgaria
American pressure repeatedly helped to
protect civil-society groups from govern-
ment reprisals.
America’s emphasis on fighting corrup-
tion began to waver in 2017, when A. Wess
Mitchell took over responsibility for StateFighting corruption
The dirty mop
WASHINGTON AND BUCHAREST
Donald Trump is making America’s battle in eastern Europe much harder
Europe
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